Today's bit of consciousness raising

Go here to marvel, and boggle, at the psychology of denial:

And then get angry.

And, no, I still can't tell you where to take that anger so as to use it productively, but I nevertheless think that having that anger is a Good Thing - a first step to something else.

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Other News:

I'm making some progress on the M.A. front, though I still haven't formulated a precise topic. I'm currently reading or rereading all the comics of my 'core group' (Finder, the works of Donna Barr, Amy Unbounded, Castle Waiting, A Distant Soil, Winging It, Raven's Children), taking detailed notes about the way they treat a number of issues (gender, culture/ethnicity, class, to name just a few). Whatever exact topic I will end up with, this kind of data collection will be necessary, so doing it now will buy me time later - and maybe the close rereading, and the collection of data on certain aspects, will help me to recognise my topic.

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To Whom It Concerns:

Minor progress on the writing front. That dialogue is a bitch.

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What I'm Doing When I'm Not Reading Comics or Worrying About the Apocalypse:

Through my research on world building (the main result of which, so far, is that world building is woefully underexplored) I discovered this, and immediately bought it. It's not, so far, all that interesting as a utopia, and it's vaguely racist, I think (though the racism doesn't intrude much on the actual 'plot'; it's just sort of there in the basic setup.) However, it's a nearly perfect example of a book whose main purpose is making a place come alive - a type of book that I'm particularly fond of. I'm reading it very slowly, just to savour the beauty of the countryside. It's like a little bit of a holiday every night before I go to sleep.

Sam and his Stupid Car

I just stumbled upon this description of SUV users from a market report by the automobile industry:

"They tend to be people who are insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors or communities."

Now, I'm not 100% sure if Sam's car really counts as an SUV, but it certainly rather looks like one - and the description fits him rather well...

I need to print this out and tack it to the wall above my screen when I'm writing Sam, because I tend to write him far too nice (misled in my mental image of him by the not all that infrequent moments in his 1973 life in which he's *not* acting like an asshole, damn those inconsistent LOM writers *g*). I'm certainly writing him rather too nice in the 'private' fic I'm writing at the moment - although that's partly justified by its being a sort of epilogue to mindfic, i.e. the 'end result' of a much longer story in which he has plenty of time and opportunity to change.